President Trump in a tweet on Monday proposed awarding a “FAKE NEWS TROPHY!” to whichever television network is “the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me).”
Trump wrote that “they are all bad,” but he singled out CNN — extending an attack he launched over the weekend, when he complained about the network's coverage of U.S. affairs for foreign audiences. Trump wrote that “they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly”; in response, CNN tweeted that “it's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours. Our job is to report the news.”
It's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours. Our job is to report the news. #FactsFirst 🍎— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) ٢٥ نوفمبر، ٢٠١٧
CNN is right about its job — and the president's, for that matter. But Trump's point about CNN's foreign reach is one that the network's president, Jeff Zucker, has made, too. And a comment Zucker made in January opened the door for Trump to claim that the coverage CNN airs abroad is unfair.
One of the things I think this administration hasn't figured out yet is that there's only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that's CNN. The perception of Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN. Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a mistake.
Zucker seemed to be suggesting that it is in Trump's best interest, coverage-wise, to treat CNN with a bit more civility. A CNN spokeswoman declined to answer a question about whether Zucker regrets the remarks.
Journalists are human, but the ones charged with straight news reporting should not cover Trump more favorably if he says nice things about their network or less favorably if he says mean things. Zucker's comments implied that the president could affect coverage — and, thus, “the perception of Donald Trump in capitals around the world” — one way or the other by being “adversarial” or not.
Trump has remained adversarial. That doesn't prove CNN International has actually tried to exact revenge by making him look bad in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus. But Trump's claim that “the outside world does not see the truth from them” gets an optical boost from Zucker's 11-month-old warning that it would be a “mistake” for the president to maintain an antagonistic posture toward CNN.
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